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Dr Jane Birkin PhD

Research Assistant

Related links: Personal homepage

Dr Jane Birkin is a Research Assistant at Winchester School of Art, and an independent artist, designer and scholar.

Jane also works on exhibitions in Archives and Manuscripts at the University of Southampton, as exhibition designer as well as in a curatorial role. She has taught across various areas, including Visual Cultures, Communication Design, Fine Art, and Digital Humanities.

Jane’s theory and practice, ever intertwined, are specifically concerned with the description techniques of archives and museums that define and manage the photographic image. Jane unfolds the term ‘archive’, not as a discussion of nostalgia and decay, but by approaching images through the ‘grey literature’ of catalogue descriptions and lists. Her research functions at the intersection of text and image, combining media culture and techniques of the archive, as well as contemporary discourse on art, photography and conceptual writing. Jane has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally.

She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Media Theory.

Research

Publications

Contact

Research interests

Jane’s research takes the archive as its primary locus. Her practice materialises as text-only work, still and moving image installation, and lecture-performance. She writes about image description and performative practices inside and outside the archive.

MPhil/PhD research

In 2015 Jane completed a practice-based PhD at Winchester School of Art, entitled, ‘Units of Description: Writing and Reading the “Archived” Photograph’, supervised by Professor Jussi Parikka.

Research group

Critical Practices

Affiliate research group

Archaeologies of Media and Technology

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Articles

Birkin, J. (2018). Translate and describe: archive-based image description as an intermedial translation technique. Amodern, 8(Translation-Machination).
Birkin, J. (Accepted/In press). Manifesto: Graphic, Sonic, Affective Object. Media Theory, 1(1).
Birkin, J. (2016). Describing the archive: preservation of space, time and discontinuity in photographic sequences. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN, 9(5), 1-19.
Birkin, J. (2015). Art, work, and archives: performativity and the techniques of production. Archive Journal, 5, 1-14.

Creative Media and Artefacts

Birkin, J. (Arranger). (2016). Air Show. Exhibition
Birkin, J. (Arranger). (2015). The Viewing of Las Meninas. Artefact, Retrieved from https://unitsofdescription.wordpress.com/practice/the-viewing-of-las-meninas/
Birkin, J. (Arranger). (2015). Writing the Image: Reading Allan Sekula. Exhibition, Artist's contribution to conference: 'Silence!' McGill University, Montreal, Canada: .Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/124696903

Thesis

Birkin, J. (2015). Units of description: writing and reading the ‘archived’ photograph

Dr Jane Birkin
Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Park Avenue, Winchester, Hampshire. SO23 8DL United Kingdom

Room Number: 36/4023

Dr Jane Birkin's personal home page

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